When I decided a few years ago to spend $150,000 on an MBA while a reporter at Bloomberg, I had an ambitious goal: be the best financial reporter the world has ever seen.<\/p>\n
This degree, I thought, would help me better understand the workings of Wall Street. It would also give me a leg up in an industry still dominated by white men and plagued by job losses.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, many of my classmates at NYU\u2019s Stern School of Business had fairly straightforward plans.<\/p>\n
They wanted to be promoted to a director at UBS, get into Bain\u2019s first-year program or move on from a nonprofit. Almost everyone in the graduating class expected to spend May 2020 locking in career opportunities and being catapulted into new, better lives.<\/p>\n
Instead, over the past few months, my graduating class watched its options disappear, as the coronavirus pandemic paralyzed the economy.<\/p>\n
New MBAs would be looking for work while corporate America was busy laying people off, which has left 18 million Americans jobless at last count on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just invested $150,000 in an education that\u2019s supposed to provide an ROI of 300-400%,\u201d my classmate Emal Rustemi said. \u201cHow do I capture that? We have hit rock bottom. The world economy has stopped.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many of us are immigrants or first-generation Americans, and the MBA was supposed to be a stepping stone into the kind of job that we couldn\u2019t get through family connections.<\/p>\n
The classes with professors such as Nouriel Roubini, Aswath Damodaran, and Scott Galloway; all-you-can-drink beer hall after class in the NYU basement; trips my classmates took to places like Australia, Tel Aviv or Hong Kong to learn about doing business abroad \u2014 that\u2019s what would set our lives on the right track.<\/p>\n
And, of course, there was that $150,000. It was a risk, but I thought investing in myself would be a better bet than buying real estate.<\/p>\n
After all, just look at the stats: The average starting salary for an MBA grad in 2019 was $115,000, compared with $55,000 for people with bachelor\u2019s degrees, according to the Graduate Management Admission Council.<\/p>\n
My classmates and I at the Spring Fling in April 2018, well before we became familiar with the term \u201csocial distancing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Plus, over the past few years, it felt safe to take a leap. It was easy to get student loans to finance our tuition payments. Unemployment was low, so theoretically there would be fierce competition to hire or promote us.<\/p>\n
My classmates moved easily in and out of jobs. One of them quit her job in marketing for Saks Fifth Avenue in the middle of B-school and quickly found work again at toothbrush startup Quip.<\/p>\n
Another classmate last year told me how he\u2019d turned down a job in New York to run part of a billionaire\u2019s family office, the kind of job that can pay upward of $300,000 in an investment banking-type role, and can instantly make your degree worth it.<\/p>\n
We were all so cocky. We could do anything we wanted. Would I take the plunge again now?<\/p>\n
To our parents\u2019 generation, an MBA was a signal that the bearer was successful, both financially and in the business world. For some companies, it was a basic requirement of employment. Now, we are worried about whether perceptions are changing.<\/p>\n
Applications to MBA programs have been falling the past few years. Purdue University said this year they would be shutting down its residential MBA program, once one of the top 30 in the country. How many more will follow suit?<\/p>\n
Will employers make the MBA optional, like some colleges are doing with the SAT?<\/p>\n
To adjust, many of us are redefining what it means to be successful, and even what we want out of life. \u201cThe world is giving you a chance to reassess your priorities and do what you want,\u201d my friend Shao Zhou said.<\/p>\n
I recognize how lucky I am to still have my job, reporting on Wall Street, at a time when many newsrooms are downsizing and layoffs more generally are soaring. I have a rare opportunity to interview CEOs and people making decisions about what the workforce will look like in the future.<\/p>\n
I have to believe that my studies have helped me fluidly translate \u201cinvestor speak\u201d into a story on-air.<\/p>\n
Coursework on how to value a company, discount cash flows and bootstrap a yield curve helped me learn how to pick apart the inner workings of finance. But the work on leadership and ethics \u2014 required courses that I had to drag myself to make it to \u2014 had some of the most lasting impacts.<\/p>\n
A friend who moved from a consumer goods company over to TIAA is on the verge of taking a voluntary payout. With a year\u2019s worth of severance, he sees it as an opportunity.<\/p>\n
He does not know what\u2019s coming next.<\/p>\n